Thursday, January 16, 2014

Dian Fossey Life and Death

Dian Fossey Life and Death
Dian Fossey Life and Death
Dian Fossey Life and Death

Dian Fossey

Were she alive today, Dian Fossey likely would agree that she
was both the best and worst thing to happen to the mountain gorillas of
central Africa.
Utterly untrained, the native Californian
journeyed to the continent in the 1960s to begin her famed field study
of the giant apes. She would become the world's foremost advocate for
the beasts.
But her study brought unprecedented international
attention, and that attracted tourists, some of whom tramp on gorilla
habitat, disturb the animals' migratory patterns and introduce human
diseases into the endangered species.
Fossey was a complicated — independent and heroic, but also petty, selfish and fragile.
She made a few friends but far more enemies during two decades in the jungle.
She
was feared and reviled by the native poachers who killed gorillas to
sell their trophy — the hands and feet, which were made into ashtrays,
and the heads.

Poached gorillas

She was competitive and often combative with fellow researchers, few of whom she trusted.
She
frequently sparred with her funding sources, including the National
Geographic Society, over her insistence that she maintain absolute
control over her research center in Rwanda.
She had a complex
relationship with American ambassadors in Africa, who eventually came to
view her as more trouble than she was worth. And she parried regularly
with the Rwandan government, its parks supervisors and its tourism
office--nettled relationships that likely spelled her doom.
Fossey
was found hacked to death in 1985. A Rwandan kangaroo court convicted
two men in the murder, but international authorities dismissed those
suspects as nothing more than convenient foils propped up by the
government.
Her murder was considered unsolved for more than 15 years.
But
today the man believed responsible, a mysterious former Rwandan
government official known as Mr. Z, is in custody awaiting trial.
The
Fossey allegation is the least of his worries. Mr. Z faces no charges
in that case but in the appalling 1994 genocide of nearly one million
ethnic minorities in Rwanda.

Dian Fossey was born in 1932 in San Francisco. Her parents
divorced when she was six. She was raised by her mother, Kitty, but
probably inherited her father's constitution and more than a few of his
biological flaws. Dian Fossey was destined to become a chain smoker and
heavy drinker, like her father, George. She also was prone to
depression, again like George Fossey, who committed suicide in his
mid-50s.
Dian was raised by Kitty and her second husband,
contractor Richard Price. Her stepfather was a taskmaster and her mother
a worrywart, according to Fossey's account of her childhood.
She
left home for college and never returned except for brief visits. Fossey
began studying veterinary science at the University of California, but
she transferred to San Jose State College and switched majors to
occupational therapy. She graduated in 1954 and moved 2,000 miles from
her mother, taking a job working with autistic children at a Shriners'
hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.
She grew into a striking young
woman. A shade under six feet tall, she had a willowy build and a vast
nest of coarse auburn hair.
Through her work she became acquainted
with doctors and their wives, and through those contacts she developed
an active social life in Louisville, cavorting with men from the city's
social register.
Among her suitors were two brothers, Franz and
Alexie Forrester, scions of a Rhodesian family with royal Austrian
roots. In part through their influence, Fossey became smitten by Africa.
Coincidentally, two other friends — a newspaper reporter and a society
doyenne — had traveled to the continent. By 1960 Fossey was obsessed with the idea of going on safari.

The Africa of Fossey's safari

"I had a deep wish to see and live with wild animals in a
world that hadn't yet been completely changed by humans," Fossey would
later write.
One problem: She had no money, and the month-long trip would cost $5,000 — more than a full year's salary.
Franz Forrester offered a solution. He proposed marriage, promising a safari honeymoon. But Fossey was not ready to settle down.
Instead,
she saved every penny for two years, then took a loan against future
income to raise the money for her safari. She departed Sept. 26, 1963,
with an itinerary that included Zaire, Kenya, Rwanda, Rhodesia,
Tanganyika and Uganda.
She had hired a British guide, John
Alexander, whom she arranged to meet at the Mount Kenya Safari Club, a
jungle playhouse for the wealthy outside Nairobi. Her 'Great White
Hunter,' as she called him, proved surly and impatient, and he and
Fossey would spend much of their time together disagreeing.

Woman in the Mists by Farley
Mowat

"He is a bore and I feel as though a huge tsetse fly were
hovering over my head all the time I'm with him," Fossey wrote in her
journal, quoted in Farley Mowat's book Woman in the Mists.
"Yesterday I was tempted to abandon him and his Land Rover when he
claimed some African had given him a bit of lip. It spoiled the whole
afternoon of game-viewing for me. But on the other hand, when this jerk
wants something, he's as obsequious as a lamb. He may be tall and
handsome, but to me he's ugly."
That tone would come to define
Fossey's relationships for decades to come. She was hard to please, and
few people managed to live up to the standards she expected — even if
she rarely attained them herself.